Chaconia by Javelin - 1/100 - RADIO - LPG Tanker

[Javelin]

Waited to respond until I had something to show. 

 

Sorry for trying to put years of operations and many courses and manuals in a single post... I guess that was a bit much. 

 

In any case, as mentioned before, the first liquid line was the hardest as I had to line it out, get a good length etc. Once this one was done (and for those paying attention, in the last picture it had already its end flanges and orange painted extremities in place), I could continue with the others. 

I was very reluctant to glue it in place, due to so many things that need to line up at one time, that I didn't glue it in place for a long time. Although I wanted to continue aft with the vapor line next to my finished liquid line, I decided not to do that. 

Although everything is far from perfect, I had a feeling that the longitudinal distance between the manifold flanges would be very important for the overall view of the model. I therefore went ahead with the aft liquid line. Once that was done, I could go towards the center and make sure those distances were at least symmetrical. 

Again everything was laying dry fitted for a very long time, until I was sure that I had at least the space to cram in the other lines. 

I then glued the two liquid (orange tipped) lines in place and continued inward with the vapor lines etc. 

 

Here you see how I lined up all manifold flanges to be at a straight line transversally. Because I had the two liquid lines fixed, I could use a straight piece of styrene touching the flanges. I then marked the edge of the "new" pipes and cut them off at that mark. 

 

 

Once I had the flanges on on one side, I then used that piece of styrene against all flanges (with the white pipes still dry fitted) and used the same trick to mark out the other side. Then I cut that side and glued the flange. Up till that moment I had the "flanges", small rings, that I needed for valves, loose on the pipes. Once the flanges were in place, I could measure and glue the first flange for the first valve and so on. 

 

And a bit of extra. As you can see on the liquid manifold ends, there are two valves. 1 is manual, with a wheel (inboard), the other is hydraulic (outboard), with a big actuator. The manual valve is called a double shut valve and is installed because a single valve can leak, chances of having two valves leaking at the same time are much smaller. Since the liquid lines can go quite high in pressure, this is a requirement for liquid lines only. On the vapour line you can see there is no more manual valve behind the hydraulic actuator. 

The high pressure line also has a double valve (more work for me again). 

 

I've been thinking of making the manifold flanges bolted, in a similar way as the strainer lids. But eventually I decided against it. It would probably be out of scale, take a long time to make and I had already used blank discs as end flanges on other parts of the vessel, so it would be out of the normal to have them with bolts here. 

 

And last but not least I tested with a paper template, the walkway that's supposed to come on top. To my greater surprise (I had to make some things slightly out of scale and expected the accumulated error to be quite large), it fitted quite well. 

I will make a cardboard adapted version of this catwalk before I make the final one in the same way as I made the driptray gratings. 

 

 

[Javelin]

Time for another update as I'm finally finishing that manifold area, something I hadn't even thought possible apart from the very start of this model. 

 

I was waiting for yellow paint to arrive, so I continued with the dreaded last line on the booster-heater system. The line ran below the rest, then came up, turned over to finally arrive at the discharge. Quite a puzzle of mounting, fitting, adjusting etc. 

 

Then the yellow paint arrived, so I could finish the vapour lines on the manifold, fix them in place and start working on that last crucial Inert Gas line. 

 

Below was my initially bent pipe, bent around 10 years ago without really having anything else apart from the plan. You can see what I mean with having the distances between the lines symmetrical and having the pipes themselves parallel. This line clearly needed some adjustment, but bending it from one piece and matching all criteria is quite impossible. 

 

After clipping the longitudinal part and adjusting its length:

 

And overview of the manifold. Vapour lines and IG line are also connected to the longitudinal pipes in the pipe rack. 

I left a little distance between the booster system and the High Pressure line, since the High Pressure line is on the hatch, while the booster system is on the vessel. In order to avoid damage, I've noticed that you can't quite make good joints, so leaving a little distance between should prevent some collisions between parts while opening the hatch. The small gap will probably be hardly visible since there will be a piece of catwalk above it after all. 

 

You can also see the instrumentation boxes behind the HP line. It took me a while to line them up as 2 feet are on the vessel, while the box itself is connected to 2 feet on the hatch. 

 

I haven't removed the hatch for quite a while, it's time to do that now since I need to fix the supports of the aft catwalk from the piping downward. I expect some adjustments to be made to avoid collisions during opening/closing of the hatch. 

 

In the last two pics you can also see the shape of the cargo pump upper parts. They'll be covered in the green tarpaulin, like the booster pump motors, so they are just roughly shapes, while the tarp will be glued over them with some small ropes to hold it (like the real thing). I think I'll use a light coloured sewing thread for that. 

[Ian_Grant]

I have to comment as clicking "wow" just doesn't do your work justice.  Incredible skill on this intricate network of piping. She'll be a sight to see afloat!

[KeithAug]

Excellent Roel. Just wish I understood it all!

[Jim Lad]

Just first class, Roel!!

 

John

[mtaylor]

Beautiful work on the piping and mind boggling at the same time.

[Keith Black]

 Simply amazing, Roel.

[Rick310]

How in the world does one keep all that straight?

WOW!!!

Rick

[Javelin]

Thanks for the comments and likes. 

 

How do I keep that straight? One of the most important tricks (but I hadn't applied it from the beginning unfortunately) is not going progressively from one side to another, but instead doing first one side, then the other side to get two fixed points. Afterwards you use a ruler or something straight to line up everything in between. I used that in several different iterations on the manifold area. I first did the support beams and then used straight lines to mount the supports in between. Similarly I first fixed the liquid manifold lines and used those two flanges to line up all the flanges in between. 

 

This week it's a small update. I had to build the level gauges for the tanks as well as the bulkhead valve handles, all for the pump domes. As mentioned somewhere before, the tanks are in fact mostly split in two, a Portside and Starboard side on each tank. They can be connected by a valve at the bottom, the bulkhead valve. This also means both halves have their own level gauge, which makes 6 in total. 

10 years ago I had made 1 level gauge, then made 5 supports, but never got to finishing them. Lucky for me at this point, since I had less job to do to actually finish them. I did decide to go for some additional detailing now. 

The bulkhead valves I wanted to leave off entirely back when I started this build. Now I did decide they 'd make a good addition to add to the clutter (and therefore realism of the model). 

 

You can see the level gauges and bulkhead valve handle between the two pumps. The pumps themselves are just shapes for now. Dry fitted. Since I've moved up to the top layers on the manifold, it's time to also go up on the rest of the vessel. The pumps and pump domes themselves are now the next point of attention to finalize. 

 

You can also see a lot of pencil marks on deck, that's not sloppiness (for once), they are actually marks for additional details. Most of them were already built, but I'm keeping them off to have more space to work (mostly to rest my hand/fingers during installation of other parts). I suppose I'm nearly at the point where they will be installed. 

 

The last major point on the cargo system is the Inert Gas line. The forward part was finished, but not the aft part. There is big blower with heating on the aft. Bending the pipe with this kind of diameter is difficult, that's why I probably didn't finish it in the past. The blower was made, the straight piece of IG line was made, but nothing was connected. I was lucky I didn't fix that long part of pipe, since I had adjust a few things to make it all fit. 

Once this part is fixed, I need to make the connections to vapour dome 3 and then it's finally finished. 

 

The damage mark on the aft of the tank dome is from a detail that got knocked off long ago. It'll be mounted again once the pumps are installed, since again I will need some access to the aft of those pumps. 

 

I will now admit what I know for quite a while now. The stanchions for the catwalk are all too short... I noticed it when I was building the manifold upper layer. There should be more space between the catwalk and the upper pipes, some other pipes need to be on top of those pipes, below the catwalk, and as it is now, that's not possible. Additionally the manifold valve actuators should be lower than the catwalk bottom and as it is now, they aren't.

The difference is around 3-4mm, so can't be really ignored. I've been devising a solution where I will install reversed U-shapes on the inside of the L-shaped supports, but haven't gotten too far in planning that. I'm also slowly changing my mind and I'll probably build the catwalks up on the vessel itself instead of building it off the ship and try to install it as one piece. 

 

 

[Keith Black]

 Roel, your detail work is just incredible.  Each update leaves me shaking my head in admiration. 

[Jim Lad]

Your determination to get this right is admired!

 

John

[Rick310]

This just incredible!

Rick